In 2010, the U.S. had been at war in Afghanistan for nearly a decade, and things weren't going

well.

The U.S. was still fighting back the Taliban, a group that they thought they had already

vanquished.

Vice President Biden had become what the New York Times described as President Obama's

in-house pessimist on the war.

We are making progress.

Are we making sufficient progress fast enough?

The answer remains to be seen.

He felt strongly that the war needed to end.

And in December 2010, in an interview with NBC's David Gregory, Biden doubled down on an Obama

administration promise that U.S. troops would start to leave the next year.

We're starting it in July of 2011, and we're going to be totally out of there, come

hell or high water by 2014.

The U.S. wouldn't come through on that promise to fully end the war then.

The withdrawal wouldn't happen until Biden finally took the reins as commander-in-chief.

I'm Allison Michaels, and this is the final episode in a special series about President

Biden and the war in Afghanistan.

In this installment, I'm back with my colleague, Arjun Singh.

In the first two episodes, we saw how Biden went from being an advocate of nation building

in Afghanistan to one of the strongest voices in the Obama administration, privately arguing

against it.

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